fesses to teach. But it is an error into which philosophers are too apt to fall, and which their readers never fail to visit with unsparing derision. It is from this failing of their own, rather than from the insignificant effect of the dissertations lately written to prove that intellectual science is not the field of discovery, that we must reckon the melancholy decline of their reputation. For what can be meant in this absurd argument by discovery? The general laws of nature are familiar to the most vulgar experience in physics as well as in morals; discoveries of such laws therefore are, and ever have been, in both cases, out of the question; but if it be the exclusive province, and the highest boast of philosophy to generalize, to detect a latent principle pervading a large class of phenomena, although invisible to vulgar eyes,-to seize analogies, and mark distinctions that have no existence for vulgar curiosity, to exhibit a rational and magnificent classification of the various elements which nature scatters around, and philosophy alone can arrange, then do the spiritual faculties and infinitely varied operations of intellectual nature, afford a much loftier employment to the curiosity of a great and penetrating mind, than the phenomena of the material world in all their variety of brightness and of wonder. There has, upon the whole, therefore, been a very marked, and as we apprehend, not a very favourable change of late years in the genius of our national literature. In poetry, perhaps, there has been a great improvement; for the depth of feeling, and energy of sentiment, which characterize one or two of the very greatest poets of the day, have no prototype in the cold, elegant, constrained, and derisive compositions of the preceding age. But if poetry has had a triumph, philosophy has visibly declined; the taste for abstract speculation has perished in the intensity of feeling and the blaze of sentiment. The mighty masters of reason are now postponed without scruple to the experienced ministers of enjoyment; and the toils of deep and anxious speculation are willingly exchanged for the charm of a momentary impulse, and the attractions of an immediate but transitory reputation. There is much unmeaning pedantry, to be sure, much idle, and tasteless, and drivelling speculation in books which profess to teach philosophy; but still the very grandeur of their scheme, which endeavours to rise above the vulgarity of ordinary discussion; to ascend to the loftier regions of thought, and to penetrate the ultimate recesses of principle, has a powerful tendency to check the commonplace arrogance, and expand the narrow grasp of uninstructed intellect. The preponderating influence of the crowd, an influence essentially vulgar in the distribution of literary honours, has wrought the momentous change which we have remarked; a change which has taken from philosophical literature its highest aims, and all the spirit of its most original enterprises, and substituted, towards the general edification, the superficial intelligence, and sophistical levity of periodical and perishable disquisition, for the massive and enduring fabrics of original discussion. It is well that philosophy should be familiarized to the general capacity, it is well that the public should be educated to receive it, and should be stirred up to the ambition of literary attainment; but it is not so fortunate for the interests of learning or of truth, that this influence should predominate so far as to reduce science to the capacity of the multitude, instead of raising the latter, by suitable gradations, to the standard of superior minds. We rejoice that philosophy now descends by a thousand streams, and overflows the surface of society; but we should wish also to see the fountain more frequently stirred by the higher genius to which the guardianship of its purity is entrusted, and to which alone we can look for that regular and increasing supply which the wants and interests, and even the caprice of human nature imperiously demands. VOL. IV 4 S IV. He thought not of the wine and bread, At once he flung him on the bed- V. Black is the band that twines her hair; 'Tis black, but streaked with lines of gold She screams, and shudders to behold The stranger youth reclining there, And, lifting her white arm in air, VIII. "Away-young man-stand far away, Scared by a mother's gloomy vow ;— IX. “Our ancient Gods no longer deign, In this dull mansion to reside But one, who dwells in heaven unseen, And one, upon the cross who died, Are worshipped with sad rite severe; No offering falls of lamb or steer, But human victims suffer here!" x. He ponders with a trembling heart, Each word that falls upon his ear, "And art thou then-ah! sure thou art My plighted spouse, that meets me here ? Be mine, my love, our father's vow Hath blessed our loves-be mine even now!" XI. "Have they not told thee then,” she cried, "That I thy consort may not be My sister is thy destined bride; But in her arms, ah! think of me, Who in my cell will think of thee, Who pine and die with love of thee, The cold earth soon my woes will hide." XII. "No!-never!-by this lamp I swear, That glowing emblems Hymen's torch, Thou shalt not perish thus from me. Oh! we will seek my father's porch, Be mine, my love, be mine to-night, XIII. She reached to him a chain of gold, Adorned with gravings rich and rare; "The cup, my love, I may not take, But give me, for thine own dear sake, One only ringlet of thy hair!" XIV. Damp strikes the hour that spirits know- XX. The words of lover and of bride- XXI. The mother hears no more-in wrath She bursts into the stranger's room;"And is there in my house a maid Thus shameless, who can thus presume Thus thinks she angrily when, lo! XXII. In the first impulse of his fear He strove to hide the maiden's face- In vain he strove her veil to place, XXIII. "Oh, mother! mother!" hollow sounds, To pain am I again restored! "Me, from my narrow silent bed, Hither a wondrous doom hath driven : XXV. "I was his doomed and destined bride And sealed your late-learned creed in blood; XXVI. "And hither from the grave I roam To drain his veins, a vampire wife! XXVII. "Young man, thy life is o'er-the pain XXVIII. "Hear, mother, hear a last request, And when the funeral flames arise, ON THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF MENTAL IMPRESSIONS, In your Number for last September "Mr Coleridge, therefore, thinks it probable, that all thoughts are in themselves imperishable, and that, if the intelligent faculty should be rendered more comprehensive, it would require only a different and apportioned organization; the body celestial, instead of the body terrestrial, to bring before every human soul the collective experience of its whole past existence. And all this," he adds, "perchance, is the dread book of judgment, in whose mysterious hieroglyphics every idle word is recorded." The idea suggested in this last clause regarding the book of judgment is strik ing, and we think, that as well as by other circumstances, it is considerably favoured by an expression in scripture. It is said, Rev. xx. 12. "That when the small and great stand before God the books shall be opened." We do not see how the plural number books would have been used unless it were meant as a figurative expression for the minds or memories of those who are to appear in judgment.* The mere probability, however, of this, taken in connection with the imperishableness of our ideas, is enough to make the most inconsiderate pause, and is greatly calculated to excite to moral circumspection. The consideration, that the soul is, in its every movement, subjected to a strict and indelible registry, is surely appalling; but it is still more so to learn, that the process of recording is effected It may be mentioned, that Jeremy book of remembrance out of which we are by one of our own faculties, one inde pendent of the will; that the very act of the mind in thinking is the act of registry; and consequently, that every man bears about in his own bosom the growing chronicle of his shame or glory. It is painful to anticipate the scrutiny of an omniscient judge; but it is an aggravation of that feeling, to think that our own minds will be the instrument of revealing and exposing all. That every circumstance of our then past life, whether mental or outward, will, at the dictate of the Almighty, rush forth and stand as apparent as our outward forms or features now do to each other, It is not of this however, but of the doctrine of the imperishableness of our ideas alone, that we would speak. To demonstrate that our ideas are imperishable, is, of course, impossible. The nature of such a subject does not admit of any one perfectly decisive argument; still, however, it is an opinion which, under slight limitations, we are inclined to maintain. Impressions which the mind receives in sleep, and in some kinds of madness, often, we have no doubt, Pass forever away like the forms of va pour; but we conceive, that all moral ideas at least, if not all ideas whatever which a man receives whilst awake, and in a state of perfect rationality, are indelibly impressed on the mind, and are perishable only so far as the mind is so. Amongst others the following are the best reasons we can give for such an article of faith.* 1st, The circumstance of our not being able by any effort to recall a forgotten idea is no proof, forms indeed no presumption that the idea is altogether lost; for often after endeavouring long, but wholly in vain, to recall what we once knew, by and bye it spontaneously presents itself to the mind.. 2dly, Often ideas and impressions long forgotten return suddenly and unexpectedly upon us, and quickly We have not read Mr Coleridge's Bio graphia Literaria, where Mr C. adduces per haps better arguments on this point t have occurred to us. again vanish without our being able to retain them. They seem to be out of the controul of the will, coming and passing away like the wind, as they list, without our being able to tell how. What we allude to will be best understood by the following passage from the original and energetic Foster: "In some occasional states of mind, we can look back much more clearly, and to a much greater distance, than at other times. I would advise to seize those short intervals out our knowing the cause, and in which the genuine aspect of some remote event, or long-forgotten image, is recovered with extreme distinctness by vivid spontaneous glimpses of thought, such as no effort could have commanded; as the sombre features and minute objects of a distant ridge of hills become strikingly visible in the strong gleams of light which transiently fall on them. An instance of this kind occurred to me but a few hours since, while reading what had no perceptible connection with a circumstance of my carly youth, which probably I have not recollected for many years, and which had no unusual interest at the time that it happened. That circumstance came suddenly to my mind with a clearness of representation which I was not able to retain for the length of an hour, and which I could not, by the strongest effort, at this instant renew. I seemed almost to see the walls and windows of a particular room, with four or five persons in it, who were so perfectly restored to my imagination, that I could recognise not only the features, but even the momentary expressions of their countenances, and the tones of their voices." of illumination which sometimes occur with Every man must have experienced in himself instances like this of involuntary resuscitation of mental images. Such instances show that there are images and ideas existing in the mind of which it is unconscious, but which, like the electric fluid unsuspectedly concealed in a summer evening cloud, requires only an appropriate medium of attraction to gleam forth. This being the case, may we not say, that if one set of ideas, which seemed to have gone for ever from the mind, is recalled by some accidental or external circumstance, all ideas, whose impressions were originally at least as strong, would recur, were but their respective associations by some object or occurrence awakened. he meets with in conversation, or in the course of his reading, are felt as quite new, the remaining great majority then are not new to him from their being of the nature of reminis cences, or ideas already existing in the mind, though it may be long forgotten, and which perhaps never would have been remembered again in life, but for their being resuggested; this shews, if not that ideas are imperishable, at least that a vast proportion of that knowledge which we imagine ourselves to have lost, has not perished, but remains, though in a latent state in the mind. 4thly, We are to be judged at last by every action, and word, and thought, and feeling of our life,* at least by those that have a moral character or relation. have in the meanwhile quite forgot, Many of these, however, we and may never again remember here many which will go perhaps considerably to influence our ultimate destiny; but if they are not merely forgotten, but actually effaced from the tablets of the mind, how are they to be recog for or against us, at the great bar nised as our own when arrayed either of judgment. To say that the Almighty, by some arbitrary miraculous act, if we may so express ourselves, can give the consciousness of their being our own, is to say what is true; but surely it is more agreeable to the general analogy of the means by which the Almighty effects his purposes, to suppose, that the ideas are not effaced from the mind; and that the soul, in another state of existence, will be so far delivered from its present impcdiments, and deadening influences, as to be alive to every impression ever made upon itt, or be able distinctly, and at Matthew xii. 36. Rom. ii. 6. and 16. 2 Cor. v. 10. Eccles. xii. 14. + We know a person who experienced on one occasion an approach to this superinpressions and emotions. He had fallen into duced energy of mind, in regard to past imgreat danger of being drowned. a river, and being unable to swim, was in In the first plunge under water, from which he recovered almost immediately, it seemed as every thing, according to his own declaration, in his previous life, that was in any way improper, had rushed upon his memory in all its original vividness. Many an occurrence and circumstance flashed upon On a Man's Writing Memoirs of Him. him in the lightning of that moment which self, Letter 1. 3dly, By a man of ordinary information, a small proportion only, out of the vast multitude of ideas which he had long forgot. |